THE GUARDIAN: With voters embracing leaders who brazenly monetise public office, experts say an ethical code is breaking down
Donald Trump came to office in 2017 after decades of bankruptcies and business failures. Yes, he was rich, but his latest financial disclosure, published this week, suggests he will depart billions richer.
In the first year of his second term, he made more than $2bn from Trump hotels, Trump golf courses, Trump cryptocurrency, Trump watches, Trump cologne, Trump Bibles and more.
That means Trump has accomplished something none of his predecessors achieved, at least not on this scale: transforming the American presidency into a moneymaking enterprise.
Politicians have always enriched themselves but the chutzpah with which Trump is doing so raises the possibility that an ethical code is breaking down. And not just in the US. Across the west, from Clacton to Queensland, a new type of leader is emerging: the political grifter.
Making public office a ticket to the high life while living standards fall might seem a hard sell to the electorate. Yet many voters seem prepared to put up with grifting, even happy to reward it.
Nigel Farage has traded on his fame and influence to become the best-paid MP at Westminster while maintaining an image as the champion of downtrodden Britons. He takes flights on the private jets of a billionaire benefactor, as does the Australian populist Pauline Hanson, who has repeatedly breached rules on declaring them.
“For decades, there was an implicit understanding that using public office for personal enrichment carried political and reputational risks,” says Tutu Alicante, a human rights lawyer based in the US and an expert in kleptocracy worldwide. “That restraint appears to be eroding.”
Alicante adds: “What feels different today is the brazenness.” The shift reminds him of places like his native Equatorial Guinea, where “corruption has become aspirational” as youngsters idolise the flashy kleptocrats who drive Lamborghinis and hang out with models.
“I worry we’re beginning to see echoes of the same phenomenon in parts of the west, where politicians who openly monetise public office – and the business figures and influencers who orbit them – are celebrated by some as symbols of success rather than cautionary tales.” » | Tom Burgis | Sunday, July 5, 2026
If Americans had had some spunk and balls, they would have incarcerated that orange, corrupt, slimeball long ago! The powers-that-be would have brought him down. Now, Trump will bring down the West instead. It seems as if the future may belong to Islam after all! No civilization can exist for long when it has lost its moral compass. This must surely be the start of the death of the West. Iranians have long chanted ‘Death to America’ (Marg bar Amrika). Perhaps the Iranians were more prescient than we ever gave them credit for. — © Mark Alexander
Showing posts with label West. Show all posts
Showing posts with label West. Show all posts
Monday, July 06, 2026
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
The West Should Cut Ties With Saudi Arabia
That’s the high-minded reasoning of the Saudi-bashers. But no matter how much we abhor the behaviour of the Saudi government, shouldn’t we consider our own interests before ending a hugely beneficial decades-old partnership? After all, as more pragmatically-minded people point out, Saudi Arabia is a crucial bulwark against the dangerous influence of Iran, which threatens the region with its expansionist ambitions. Saudi Arabia also provides the West with vital intelligence in the fight against groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS. And while we may not like the conservative form of Islam practised in the Kingdom, is that any of our business? If it is, shouldn’t we support its reform-minded Crown Prince? After all, he has lifted the ban on Saudi women driving, allowed cinemas to reopen for the first time in 35 years, and has promised to introduce a more moderate form of Islam to the Kingdom. Shouldn’t the West give him a chance?
The BBC’s star international correspondent Lyse Doucet chaired a line-up of Middle East experts. Who’s right and who’s wrong? Hear the arguments and decide for yourself.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Erdogan's War on the West
In 2005, the Turkish prime minister at the time, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, along with his Spanish counterpart, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, became the co-chairs of a United Nations-sponsored global effort that went by the fancy name "Alliance of Civilizations." Twelve years later, Zapatero is a retired politician, the Western world faces different flavors of Islamist-to-jihadist threats and Erdogan is at war with Western civilization. » | Burak Bekdil | Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Monday, April 25, 2011
REUTERS: An authoritarian Arab ruler unleashes his security forces and irregular militia gunmen to crush peaceful pro-democracy protests, killing hundreds of people including women and children.
Does the West a) issue statements condemning the excessive use of force; b) seek U.N. sanctions and an International Criminal Court investigation; c) provide practical support for pro-democracy protesters, d) intervene militarily?
The answer, to many human rights campaigners, seems to vary unacceptably depending on the state concerned.
Western powers which took up arms against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, citing the United Nations principle of the responsibility to protect civilians, have confined themselves so far to verbal outrage at the killing of some 350 people in Syria.
The balance of Western economic and security interests and humanitarian values is different in each case but the perceived double standard is causing anger in the Middle East and among Western publics.
"After Friday's carnage, it is no longer enough to condemn the violence," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at pressure group Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
"Faced with the Syrian authorities' 'shoot to kill' strategy, the international community needs to impose sanctions on those ordering the shooting of protesters."
When the Gulf Arab kingdom of Bahrain called in Saudi troops last month to help quash a pro-democracy movement led mostly by the Shi'ite Muslim majority, the United States and Europe uttered a few pro-forma words of disapproval, then fell silent. » | Paul Taylor | PARIS | Monday, April 25, 2011
Monday, March 01, 2010
ARAB NEWS: GENEVA: Iran launched a fierce verbal assault on the West on Monday, charging some European countries of subjecting Muslim communities to insult and violence and suggesting the United States and Europe aided terrorism.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the United Nations Human Rights Council, to which it is bidding for election in May, that some Western states are gross violators of rights and are promoting lewdness to undermine family life.
"There is a growing trend in applying double standards by the Western countries with regard to the freedom of expression and opinion," Mottaki told the 47-member forum at the start of its main annual four-week session.
"Muslims throughout the world in general and the Muslim communities in Western countries in particular, have been the target not only of massive propaganda campaigns but outright social castigation and open violence, all under the pretext of freedom of expression," he declared. >>> Robert Evans, Reuters | Monday, March 01, 2010
Friday, August 22, 2008
IRISH TIMES: Russia and key Western nations remained at odds last night over a UN resolution aimed at bringing peace to Georgia, with the US, France and Britain insisting on immediate withdrawal of Russian troops and a commitment to Georgia's territorial integrity, according to UN diplomats.
Russia put its draft resolution, which restates and endorses a six-point peace plan promoted by French president Nicolas Sarkozy and signed last week by Russia and Georgia, into a final form that can be put to a vote in the UN Security Council. But Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin did not indicate when he would call for a vote.
"Our draft resolution is a reconfirmation of the six-point agreement, and there's no territorial integrity in the six principles," Mr Churkin said after a council meeting yesterday called by Russia. "We believe the six principles are clear and already implemented."
But the US and its European allies have criticised Russia for remaining in Georgia and performing military operations despite last week's cease-fire. The agreement says both Russian and Georgian forces must move back to positions they held before fighting broke out August 7th in Georgia's South Ossetia region, which has close ties to Russia.
The American, British and French envoys made clear yesterday that they won't accept a resolution that doesn't include clarifications of the six-point plan including an immediate Russian withdrawal and reaffirmation of Georgia's territorial integrity. Russia, West Remain at Odds on UN Resolution >>> | August 22, 2008
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL:
A New Arms Race with Russia?: Moscow isn't really afraid of the US missile defense shield. A day after the US signed an important deal with Poland, German commentators say that Russia is merely pining for the good old days of the Soviet Union >>> | August 21, 2008
THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Russia never Wanted a War >>> By Mikhail Gorbachev | August 19, 2008
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
BBC: Most people in Muslim countries and the West believe divisions between them are worsening, a Gallup poll for the World Economic Forum (WEF) suggests.
The poll also suggested that most Europeans thought more interaction with Islam would be a threat - though most Americans disagreed.
WEF chairman Klaus Schwab said the poll pointed to "an alarmingly low level of optimism" over dialogue.
It surveyed about 1,000 people in each of 21 countries, mostly in mid-2007.
The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum begins in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday.
Cartoon controversy
Respondents were asked how they thought relations were now and how they thought they would develop.
Describing the position now, majorities on both sides said they did not believe the two sides were getting along.
This belief was strongest in the US, Israel, Denmark - where the publication of cartoons about the Muslim Prophet Muhammad caused worldwide controversy - and among Palestinians. Islam-West rift widens, poll says >>>
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
SONS OF APES AND PIGS.ORG: Threats of murder. Fears of riots and religious violence. Demands for censorship. Politicians in hiding, fearing for their lives. A government preparing for the worst.
It's happening right now in a most unlikely place ... the Netherlands, once regarded as Europe's quietest and most stable nation.
And it's all happening because of a 10-minute movie that hasn't even been made yet.
It's the work of Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who calls his movie "a call to shake off the creeping tyranny of Islamicization."
Wilders plans to present it to his country on television sometime next month.
"People who watch the movie will see that the Koran is very much alive today, leading to the destruction of everything we in the Western world stand for, which is respect and tolerance," Wilders, the 41-year-old leader of the right-wing Party for Freedom, said in a telephone interview.
"The tsunami of Islamicization is coming to Europe. We should come to be far stronger."
Four months ago, he called for the Koran to be outlawed in the Netherlands.
"I believe our culture is much better than the retarded Islamic cultures," he told FOXNews.com in a telephone interview. "Ninety-nine percent of the intolerance in the world comes back to the Islamic religion and the Koran." Geert Wilders: the koran will destroy everything we in the Western world stand for >>> By Ibn Misr
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
EDITORIAL: Beheadings, lapidations, amputations, suicide-bombings, honour-killings, flag-burnings, effigy-burnings – Is there nothing to which these mentally-deranged, half-baked, quasi-pious people won’t stoop?
These misdeeds, of course, are carried out in the name of Allah and his prophet, the prophet Muhammad. Not in God’s name, you understand! But in the name of Allah, the false god, the false deity, in the name of Muhammad, the false prophet.
Muslims believe that Jesus was not the Son of God, for they believe that God begat not, and was not begotten. They believe that Jesus was a mere prophet – a man, like you and me. Further, they believe that Jesus was not crucified, despite plenty of historical evidence to prove that he was. To Muslims, Jesus was simply the penultimate prophet of Allah (not God), and although he was a fine man (and all that), He was inferior to the superior and ultimate prophet of Allah: Muhammad.
The West, in recent decades more especially, has embarked on a journey to liberate people. We have liberated women, bringing them away from the kitchen sink; and we are in the process of liberating homosexuals, bringing them away from the closet. We have given blacks rights, we have given women rights, and we are in the process of giving homosexuals rights, too.
Compare this situation with the deplorable state of women in the Muslim world, a world in which women’s lives count for nothing. They are mere chattels. They exist for the sexual pleasure of men. They have few rights, and even fewer chances of a decent life in this world. They must cover themselves up, and must not leave the home unless they are given permission to do so by their guardians: men!
If someone draws a cartoon of their beloved prophet Muhammad, then Muslims are up in arms. If a woman falls in love with a man that the family deems unfit for her love, then she is killed for the sake of honour. If a man happens to be homosexual (through no fault of his own – naturally God made him that way), then he is thrown off the nearest minaret to a certain death, or if he happens to live in Iran, then he is hanged on a rope. Whichever way it happens to be, it is a grim death.
You tell me how these two worldviews can be reconciled! You tell me how there can be a rapprochement! Fact is our two worlds are headed on two divergent and separate paths: The West is headed in the direction of light; the East is headed in the direction of darkness, even darker than the world they already inhabit!
Last year, we witnessed the furore over the innocuous drawings of the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in Denmark; in recent days, we have witnessed the furore over the knighthood of Salman Rushdie by Queen Elizabeth II. In Pakistan and in other parts of the Middle East, flag- and effigy-burnings are taking place. And those effigies are of no less a person than our beloved Queen! And they talk of wanting to receive respect. If they really want respect, then it is high time that they showed some!
The truth of the matter is this: Our two worlds are on two separate journeys. We, in the West, want to liberate people; they, in the Muslim world, want to place people in chains. So how can there be a meeting of our two cultures? How can there be a rapprochement? How can there be a coming together? There cannot be, of course.
That is why I say to you today that as sure as night follows day, there will soon be – nay have to be – a clash of these two cultures, ein Zusammenprallen. How can we expect anything else?
We are being led by incompetent fools! This is no time for prissy, pretty little leaders – leaders who worry more about their image than about affairs of state.
Today, we worry about green issues, we worry about whether people smoke or not, we worry about health issues (when, actually, people are unhealthier than they have ever been), and we worry about the ecology. We worry about all kinds of things; but we do not worry about what is important: Our civilisation!
To be candid with you, I would prefer to vote for a man who smokes, or for a man who has a lover, or for a man who is gay, as long as he is capable of getting us out of this mess with Islam, as long as he is capable of winning the culture war. He can puff away as much as he likes, he can screw himself to death. Just get us out of this mess with Islam!
Let’s get our priorities right.
It should be clear to all good-thinking people by now that there is no meeting of the East and West to be. We must fight for our survival. We must fight for our beliefs. We must fight for our values. As far as I am concerned, war is what they want, and war they will get. I am ready and willing and prepared to make the sacrifice. Are you? I hope your gun powder is dry. If it isn’t, it ought to be. There are tough times ahead of us.
©Mark Alexander
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